The Sean McDowell Show - Morality: Christian vs Atheist

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Atheist Emery Wang co-hosted the podcast “A Christian and an Atheist” for a decade. What did he learn? Does he find any evidence for God compelling? We start with these questions and end up debating whether God or atheism best explains morality. Enjoy! Make sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos for more on apologetics, worldview, and other aspects of culture! READ: Is God Just a Human Invention? by Sean McDowell (https://amzn.to/41HFNDD) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

What did an atheist learn from a decade of having conversations and debates with Christians? Well, we're going to probe into that today with my friend Emery Wong, who used to host my favorite podcast for years. It was called A Christian and an Atheist. It went from 2005 to 2014. I was a Christian ever since I can remember. That's pretty much how our parents taught us. That's what started to unravel when I got into college.

I started to realize that. Somehow I stumbled across this on podcasts. It was like, wow, this is fascinating. I don't know how long I listened to it, but in the back of my mind was like, I wish I could be on this show and defend the Christian side. Never reached out. And seemingly out of the blue,

you reached out to me, invited me on. I haven't even checked, maybe two or three episodes. We had some good conversations, a little bit of debate, became friends. You reached out recently and I'm like, hey, let's have another conversation. So it's fun to just catch up. It's great to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, it's great to see you again, Sean. And thanks for the kudos there. That podcast is no longer there. That was something we did. That was kind of before the YouTube era.

And so I don't know if you can still find it anywhere. I think the RSS feed is gone, but I'm glad you listened to it. And I'd be surprised maybe two or three of your, if two or three of your listeners actually remember that podcast, I'll be pretty happy, but it was a good time. Yeah, but I'll tell you, you started in 2005. That is right when the new atheist movement started. And there was a lot of cultural conversation about this. You went for a decade. It was 133 episodes I checked, which is interesting. It said global rank 2%. That sounds pretty fancy. I don't know exactly what that means, but you guys had a good

listenership. Now, your background as a lawyer, I think really lended you to understand and argue and reason well. I want to unpack some of the things you learned through this, but also your story a little bit. You grew up in a Christian home. So tell me a little bit about just growing up, growing a church, what it was like in the Wong household growing up. So I was a Christian ever since I can remember. That's pretty much how our parents taught us, my sister and I. We mostly went to a Southern Baptist church. So I guess my tradition,

Christian tradition is mostly in that vein. And so, I mean, it was a big part of our lives. It was, I think I probably took it the most seriously in my family. I was at church, you after i after probably around junior high or so you know i was in church all the time uh involved in a lot of things and and because it was a an evangelical church the whole um you know the whole mandate to go spread the gospel was always heavy on on our in our minds and so there was always a lot of pressure to you know if you're sitting next to a stranger on the bus stop you should go and and share the gospel with them and i didn't really get to that level but i did uh do some things like that but i was always annoying my friends with you know trying to get them to come to church and get them to, to, um, accept

Jesus and all that kind of thing. So, um, it was, uh, I mean, it was my life. It was my whole identity. And, uh, um, uh, so yeah, that, that pretty much went on until, until I was 22, uh, in college. And then I left the faith. Um, but we can, we can talk about that. Let's unpack that. What was the first moment, if you remember it, where you thought, wait a minute, I don't know how to answer that. Could I be wrong here? And you started to rethink things. Well, so I've always had a lot of questions and things, you just kind of file them away in the box of, you know, it's a mystery or whatever.

Most of the things that weighed on me had to do with matters of fairness. And there was more than one thing, but one big thing I can think of, it kind of follows from the whole evangelism thing. And so I remember one of the tools we had for what we called witnessing in our church was a tract, which is like a little pamphlet. And ours was called, you probably know them well. Ours is called How to Have a Full and Meaningful Life. And so, you know, the implication is that if you're not a believer in Christ, you have an empty and meaningless life, or at least not a full and meaningful one.

So that's what I would use to try to share the plan of salvation with my friends. And as luck would have it, you know, none of them really bought it. They're just like, okay, that's fine. And they go on with their lives and you know i but i i had to believe that they knew better right that they somehow they had a god-shaped void or or they they had a somehow meaningless life and and because otherwise you know what what what reason would they have to want to be saved if they didn't have some sort of a need for this? And I also had to believe that they were consciously rejecting God because they knew better. Because if they just didn't know better, they just didn't, you know, me talking to them about Jesus was the same as me talking to them about Zeus.

You know, I mean, there's a lack of culpability there. So they had to somehow know that God was, that Jesus was, my message was correct, and somehow they're rejecting it either through pride or through whatever. Without that, it would be, I couldn't justify how they should be punished, how they should go to hell for doing something that's, you know, basically not knowing any better. So that was the belief I always had to have. And that's what started to unravel when I got into college, I started to realize that, you know what, these people that I'm witnessing to, my friends, other people I met in college, they honestly don't believe, they're not rebelling.

They're not, they don't know that my message is true and they're rejecting it any more than, you know, I reject the Greek gods out of pride or out of rebellion. I'm not. I just don't buy it. And so when I finally realized that, then there became the problem of, well, then how do I justify my belief that God's going to punish them in hell for this? What are they actually being punished for? It'd be sort of like if you and I, you know, wake up on Judgment Day and Zeus is sitting on the throne, and he would say, hey, Sean and Emery, you know, why didn't you believe in me? Didn't you watch Clash of the

Titans or Jason and the Argonauts? Come on, you know, why do you rebel against me? Why do you reject me? And I think we would be justified and say, we didn't reject you. We didn't rebel against you. None of that was going on. We just didn't buy it, right? And I think if we were to be punished and sent on a short boat ride across the River Sticks, that would be unjustified for you and I, because we don't have that culpability of rejecting Zeus or rebelling against Zeus. We've done nothing wrong as to him, other than we're unlucky, I guess, or we're just mistaken.

And that, to me, if that's the same boat that these non-believers were in, then I just couldn't justify that they're going to hell. So that was one major crack in sort of my christian worldview that's that's really interesting so this is during college you are starting to ask these questions and slowly just kind of chip away at your faith you were out of the home in college is that right that's true now these questions were probably always in the back of my mind because you know you sit there go i share these i share these tracks with my friends and how come they still don't believe and and so those are always in the back of my mind i i guess they sort of came to the surface more when i was in college and i don't know if it's because i was in college

it's just it's maybe just the age that i was at yeah that makes total sense so for me growing up you obviously know who who my dad is these are the kinds of conversations we would have regularly in our household, where my dad was always just kind of pushing back, probing, we'd have apologetics conversations. They were on the table. They were kind of a part of life. Was that your experience in the church, in your family? Did you feel the permission and freedom to ask these questions? Or is it more like, I don't know if I can ask these questions and these questions are welcome here yeah so with my parents I I was free to talk about those things but I yeah I probably more so with my dad and we didn't get into it that much

because I didn't have that many doubts, at least expressed, when I was still living at home. After I stopped being a Christian, and I wrote a paper and I sent it to every Christian I knew. That was... Okay, you froze for a second. They didn't really want to discuss that you froze for a second you said I wrote a paper and sent it to everyone I knew so go ahead and re-say that and I'm going to edit it out

give me one second to write this down I don't know why it froze but we're at about 10 minutes. Okay, go ahead and say, I wrote the paper and pick up from there. So I wrote a paper called Why I'm No Longer a Christian, and I basically sent it to every Christian I knew,

including my old pastor and my parents. And so that's when I really started to have more discussions with my parents about my parents. And so that's when I really started to have more discussions with my parents about my doubts and they didn't really want to talk about that. So I guess, did I have somebody to talk to? Sort of, but I didn't have that much. Actually, I did try talking to my pastor around that time, maybe a year before. And, you know, he was always just, well, these doubts are, I wouldn't want to say that he poo-pooed them, but that's kind of what he did.

He was just like, yeah, you know, that doesn't make sense. And so I never felt that there was any dialogue about it. It was just more like, okay, you're wrong. And those doubts are unfounded and here's why and pray and everything will be fine. So I don't think I had that sort of robust dialogue. It sounds like you and your dad had. So I appreciate that honest feedback. Obviously, you've thought about this a lot and are convinced that Christianity is not true, which is fair. But if you were to go back to yourself, how do you think some of the people in your life could have better responded to you, given the doubts and questions that you raised? I would say just sort of doing like what we're doing right now, right? Just talking.

So I think before college, though, I didn't really raise that many doubts. I mean, I had questions about things, but they weren't so much doubts about God. So I guess if I would have met somebody in college to talk to about this, yeah, it would have been good. I think eventually I would have ended up in the same place uh but just to talk it out and not to because i remember when i was transitioning out of of my faith i i was acquainted with a baptist student union minister there and i had done some things with his group while in college and when i told him i was leaving the faith he just kind of you know they just don't want to hear it you know uh and so yeah if i would have had some dialogue i think it would have been great

it would have been great relief uh but i think i still would have ended up in the same place because with all the dialogue that i've had in the intervening decades sure my my you know core objections still remain so they probably i probably still would have gone there that's fair and we'll we'll get we'll get to some of that in due time. So some of the objections you have, of course, are moral, used words like culpability, justified. Are you a moral objectivist or a subjectivist now that you're an atheist? Which position do you take on morality? So I think I would explain it as an objective within a subjective framework. So I would describe it sort of like won the World Series, right? Did they win the World Series? Anyway. I think so.

I didn't watch it. Yeah, I thought I heard that on the news. But anyway, whatever baseball team won the World Series, we can agree that they objectively won. But that's only within the subjective rules of baseball, right? Because the rules of baseball are not objective, right? The diamond could be bigger, it could be four strikes instead of three strikes and you're out. I mean, those are subjective created by people. But once you have a subjective framework, then I think you can have objective, you know, they objectively won within those rules. And it works pretty well.

I mean, you don't often have arguments of, well, did they really win the game or didn't they? Everybody pretty much agrees they won, even though the framework was subjective. And so I feel like morality is objective within the subjective framework of human limitations and what's good and bad for humans in general and that kind of thing. Does that answer the question? I think so. So it sounds to me more like, obviously, when we create a sport, there's other sports, there's rules that vary, like take basketball, the three-point line is longer, the key is shaped differently, you can goaltend internationally, you can't. These are rules that really are subjective, but once they exist, it's a fact that they exist within that system. But ultimately, the game of basketball is a subjective thing that we have invented for an

end we want to accomplish. So when it's all said and done, it's subjective. So I guess I was just probing if in your mind there's any tension between saying the core objection you have against theism is things like fairness injustice which seems to be more of a transcendent objectively existing moral code and then morality being subjective i won't probe that anymore you've obviously thought about this a lot but would you you at least say, yeah, there's somewhat of a tension that's there, or would you say, no, that's no problem at all for you? It's no problem for me because I'm not saying this is cosmically unfair, universally unfair for all of the universe, right? I'm saying it's unfair within the human experience. And so when I say something is unfair or something or fair,

good or bad, I'm talking about within the human experience. You could say, for example, what's good for humans is really bad for a lot of animals, right? So is it good or bad? Well, it's bad for all the animals that we've displaced by building all these apartments and places for people to live, but it's good for humans in that you know we have places to live and and it helps our survival and our well-being so that's all when i limit it to that when i say something is good or bad fair or not fair and i limit it to the human sphere uh then i don't see attention and i think what happens there's a disconnect because i've heard this debate quite a bit you know objective subjective thing yeah it sounds like when christians say something is right or wrong they want it to be uh like one plus one is two uh for all of reality uh and i i don't claim that

when i say something is right or wrong or fair or not. I am talking about just within the subjective framework that humans are valuable, that we want, this is what's good for us. These are our physical and mental limitations and we must stay within them so we don't harm ourselves. You could ask the question, who cares if you harm humans? Yeah, that's a legitimate question. If you don't agree that you shouldn't harm humans, then my objectivity then falls with that too. But I think as long as you agree that humans are the, you know, what's right, when we say what's right, we're talking about what's right for us, then I think I don't see any tension there. And so if you want to drag that out of the the human sphere and say well something's not really good unless it's universally good then i you know i have a different response to that but that's not my definition of

good and bad if that makes sense yeah fair enough i'm so tempted to probe this a little bit more because yeah just just granting that humans we should care and are bound and we must work for the survival of other species itself is obviously not something grounded within atheism, but something we've decided. So somebody decides differently. They haven't technically done anything wrong according to that system. And of course, you understand that. I do. And to push back on that, you could say the same thing about God, though, right?

God, if we ground our morality, let's say, in God, it's still subjective to him. It's what he decides. And if you want to say that, well, his's, you know, his nature is fixed and he only goes by his nature, therefore it's objective because his nature is fixed. You know, I think that opens up another sort of can of worms with God's free will and all that. But ultimately, I think if you're grounding those things within a being with free will, it's still subjective. It's subjective to that being then, right? So that is an interesting line of reasoning that there's a subject to human beings and the subject to is God. But of course, as you hinted at, to ground a subject in a being

in an atheist universe where we just bubbled up accidentally. There's no purpose. There's no plan. Morality just came about through an accidental process that helps us survive. That's very different than an eternal, self-existent, all-knowing, essentially good subject. Like to reduce it down to subjectivity say well humans and god are subjects is to miss even if you don't think god exists the infinite distance between the two of them so i'm not sure the same problem arises if you ground it in god's character versus within human subjects that's where i would go with it tell me what you think i wasn't even planning on going here. This is interesting. Let's just see where this goes, then I want to get back to your podcast. Okay. Well, I think it's just a matter of degree and quantity. I mean, God is, so he's

eternal, he's infinite, all this kind of thing, but it doesn't mean that it can't, it's still not subjective to him if it's up to what he wants. Unless you're saying that God has a nature that he's subject to in everything he does. And so at the end of the day, you're not saying it's objective because of God, it's objective because of his unchanging nature. Is that the backstop there? Well, I don't think we separate the two of those. Obviously, God's decisions to give us moral principles to create human beings stem from his character.

He's a being that makes choices, but his nature is fixed in the sense that God's not a created being. He's an all good. He's eternal. He's all knowing. He's all loving within his very character. So there's an objective truth about God's nature that is unchanging, that is very different than a subject deciding something. If there even is such a thing as free will, of course, is a separate topic to God and to human beings. So I don't think it's just, I wouldn't look at it as a matter of degree with human beings and with God. I think there's an infinite distance between the two of

them, even if you don't think they exist, just by the very concept of what God and humanity would mean. So if God were to make a rule and say, okay, you can't, this is wrong. Okay, X is wrong. And then that's wrong subject to God. He's saying it's wrong. I still think under the definition of subjective, it would be so subjective to God because he's a being. But still think under the definition of subjective, it would be so subjective to God because He's a being. But then let's say He says tomorrow, well, X is no longer wrong. I mean, those are... I guess I don't understand those other than

subjective actions. So we're using the same word subjective right and i think it means very different things when we're referring to god is when we're referring to human beings so yes god is a subject god gives certain commands that can change we see that in the old testament for different reasons of course but god's character doesn't change, and it's fixed, and it's eternal. The principles, I would argue, don't change, although maybe the application does as culture changes over time. I mean, that is apples and oranges with human beings as a subject deciding what morality is somewhat arbitrarily. I mean, there's no basis by deciding I should care about somebody's survival versus I shouldn't care about somebody's survival.

Well, there's some basis, right? Well, morally speaking. There's basis in our experience. Right. But if we say morality morality is is what is is how actions affect our experience in life for example does it does it causes pain or not does it you know does it and and our lives sooner than than later if we define those as the parameters, then we can come up with, this is better than that. And then that would be what I would call morality in the human context. Okay. So when I say basis, I guess what I don't mean is we can't say there's such a thing as pain and we have human beings and what I do to you affects me.

That's the case. What I mean by basis is duties to care about and morally bound. That basis doesn't bubble up from nature and doesn't bubble up from pain itself. I think that was a part of Hume's point, obviously, a couple centuries ago when he says you can't get an ought from an is. Yeah, there's other human beings who have pain, and I certainly don't want somebody to inflict pain upon me, but how do I get the oughtness that I'm bound to not do that? That doesn't fall from the existence of pain. That's what I meant by no basis to do so. I think practically there's a basis. If we say we want to live together as a society,

I don't want to be treated a certain way. But objectively, somebody who goes, I've got the power, I can do whatever I want to, and I don't care about your pain, isn't technically doing something objectively wrong if there's no God. That's what I mean by basis. Well, it depends what you... So if there's a goal, right, there's agreed upon goal, then it could be judged against the goal is right or wrong. So for example, in the analogy of sport, you talk about basketball. If we all agree that the goal is to score as many points as possible and by putting it in a certain basket, then it is wrong. If you say, I don't care and I'm going to hold the ball and not shoot it and not let anybody have it,

well, then we're not going to get as many and is it as many baskets and so therefore under the goal of we need to win the game and we win the game by sinking as many baskets as possible then what you're doing is wrong um now you could say it sounds like you're saying is well what if the guy just doesn't agree that winning basketball is the goal right um yeah then you're right then it falls apart but wouldn But wouldn't we have that same problem if God says, do this, and I don't agree that listening to God is the goal? Who cares if God says it? Okay, so there's two problems here, and this is really interesting. There's the practical problem if somebody says, I don't care if I'm gonna listen to God and of course if

Christianity is true that's the story of mankind people saying I don't care and I'm not gonna listen to God that practical problem would still exist even if God exists and doesn't exist but without God you're left with the idea of an agreed upon goal. We agree upon this, and that is arbitrary and subjective to human beings and what goals we decide. And if we decide to change the goals, we can change. And you said majority decision with this. Well, in the past, it wasn't always majority. It was basically the person with the guns. So we're left with the inability to judge somebody as doing something morally wrong that agreed upon a different goal. If God exists, then we have a sense of we're actually supposed to love one another. Justice is a real thing. There's a better way to live here

than a better way to live there. So I agree with you practically, the problems still exist. That's the history of the world, and that's all over scripture. But the metaphysical question, the moral question, is black and white difference between the two. So I guess I don't understand why something is more right if God says it's right than if we say it's right. So if God were to say what's right is for you to let all the people drown in the world while I flood it, and then I'm gonna put you on this boat, and you can't save anybody, and that's right. And so when you have somebody trying to, you know, grab onto your boat

in the middle of the flood, the right thing to do is just to kick them back and don't let them get on your boat. Now, so which one is morally right? I guess you're saying that because God commands it, it's automatically right. Yes, it's fine if your goal is to obey God. But if your goal is for humans to save human life, then it would be wrong, and to save the person would be right. So it's still, I think you always have the problem of which, you know, what's more important. And I guess at the end of the day, I felt that what affects humans is the most important thing.

If God were to say, well, I just want everybody to die. I want you guys all to just burn in hell and die. I wouldn't call that right because I'm a human, right? The animals might think, hey, that's great. You know, bravo, God, keep on going. Let's get rid of these humans. They've been messing up our ecosystem. But as a human, I would always have to say that's

wrong because that's what I am. This is one of the things I appreciate you, Emery. You ask tough questions. You take ideas to where they go. Not afraid to have these kinds of conversations. In some ways, we've kind of hit some clarity as I see it. Tell me if you see it this way. If there were a God who is the fount of morality, would that God's opinion matter more and surpass my opinion if there were such a God? That's kind of at the root of it, right? I mean, would you agree that? Now, I realize we raise questions of like the flood and we have to get into when can God judge and when is this right and wrong? Like that's kind of a follow-up question. I don't know that we necessarily want to go down that road, but it seems like at some point we have to ask ourselves, do I submit to authority beyond myself

if I don't understand? Hence, if there's a God, is his opinion more valuable than mine? Or I'm going with my instincts and how I see right and wrong. Is that fair? Did I mischaracterize things in your view? Well, I understand your statement. And yeah, that's fair. But I guess if you're advocating for deferring to God, I would say that most of the atrocities that we've seen in the name of religion have been because of that, right? God says we should have the inquisition. God says we should throw the Virgin into the volcano.

God says this. And once you divorce, I think history shows that once we divorce morality from considerations of your neighbor you divorce, I think history shows that once we divorce morality from considerations of your neighbor and what's good for humans, whichever God we serve, that's really dangerous because then anything goes because who really knows the mind of God and who are you to say your interpretation of God is correct and so you kind of throw you kind of

throw what's good for people out the door and it's just whatever interpretation of of god and whichever god you happen to serve and that to me is is pretty dangerous i think there's it's a fair point that there's a lot of abuse of religion and people claiming to speak for God. We've seen that in Christianity. We see that in a lot of religions. But I think I would push back on that idea and say just because there's some people who abuse the name of God and want to accomplish something politically or power or for some other motivation doesn't delegitimize the ethical foundations of what Christianity teaches the existence of God and how he would actually want us to live I think those are abuses of it yeah I agree with you and I don't I

don't mean to try to use the abuses of religion to define religion you know that's definitely not not the right way to approach it I guess what I'm saying is once once you divorce you know even not looking at any abuses you can think of in the in the past once you divorce uh morality from the effect on humans uh and once that becomes second tier and and then the most important thing is what does god want then uh then i think you're always in that danger zone especially when what god wants okay uh you know goes against human life or whatever so it was interesting to me that you said a minute ago you said when we and i forget the exact wording but when we kind of divorce the ethic of god from care for our neighbor, something to that effect.

I mean, loving our neighbor is profoundly and deeply, as you know, a Christian ethic. It was not in the world outside of Jesus saying, love your neighbor, storing the gospel of Luke about good Samaritan. Why love our neighbor? Because your neighbor is made in God's image. Because your neighbor has intrinsic... You're sure there were no parallel ethical teachings in other cultures and faiths that were similar? So here's what I would say. You might find some similar teachings. You find the golden rule, as C.S. Lewis argues throughout the different cultures of the world. The idea that your neighbor is actually your enemy, the Good Samaritan, and love your enemies,

that is a very unique Christian ethic rooted in Jewish ideas, not in other cultures of the world. I mean, that is unique. For the discussion, I'll give that to you. Let's say that's true, that love your neighbor came from Christianity. Fine. Okay. And then what next? Okay. Fair enough. So the idea of divorcing morality from humans, to me, it's not just, well, whatever God says apart from human beings, God is the one who created us. When Jesus asked, what's the greatest commandment? It's love God and love your neighbor. It's not, do whatever I say, divorce from human beings. I mean, I would actually argue that it is the Christian ethic that has brought not only

historically some of the greatest acts of charity and kindness because of what Jesus taught, because of what Jesus modeled. This idea that I should care for my neighbor profoundly is what God ultimately commands. Now that raises tough questions. Flood in the Old Testament, I get that. We can get to those. But at root of the Christian ethic built in is love your neighbor. So anybody who says just do whatever God says, divorce from human beings.

And I know you're not saying that. That's an example of the abuse isn't following the Christian ethic to its logical conclusion. Are you sure though, Sean? I mean, think about it. What's the best thing you can do for your neighbor? Save them from hell. Holy crap. Everything pales in comparison. If they're going to go to hell by not believing, then the most loving thing you can do to your

neighbor is to get them out of hell by hook, crook, or whatever way you have. And if you believe, for example, there was a time that, and I think many Christians still believe that babies are innocent, that they don't go to hell. Yet, if you let 100 babies become adults, most of them are going to go to hell, if it's true that most don't become believers. So, you could take that logic and say, okay, we need to do what's best for people. And we also must follow what God says that if you don't believe in Jesus, you go to hell. Then we should kill all the babies before they reach the age of accountability. Now, I know that's an extreme example.

Of course. that's an extreme example of course but just as to illustrate the point of i don't see where that's i can that that can still fit with what you just said i'm obeying god i'm trying to save souls and i'm preventing these folks from going to hell yes i killed them they lost their lives but that's infinitely better than them ending up in hell which most of them will if i don't commit this act right now so that's an example. There can be other examples that are not that extreme, but those are the things that you can go to and fulfill both of your requirements there, I think. So I would push back on that, obviously, as you'd expect me to, is that in one sense, is the greatest thing I can do to save somebody from hell i think the greatest

thing that i can do is through my life and through my words try to model and help somebody understand the goodness of god so they can come to love god as well and be loved by god now that includes obviously not going to hell but but the negative keeping somebody from hell isn't the motivation scripture pushes. It's more know God, experience his love, be in a relationship with him because we have been designed to be in a relationship with God and be with others. Now, I resonate deeply with the way you frame that. I grew up with parents on crusade, Camps Crusade, my parents are, and my parents are evangelists.

And as a kid, we would go out and knock on doors when I go to these Campus Crusade huge events. And I was honestly never really comfortable with that. I didn't love that. My dad just naturally does evangelism. It stems from his experience, from his life, from his love. And he never made me feel uncomfortable in that sense. But there was this emphasis on evangelism, save people, go.

And that's fine. Some people are wired that way powerfully. I get it. So I only bring that up that I resonate, I think, in your experience in the Southern Baptist. It was save, avoid people from going to hell. I think there's so much more to the Christian life than that. And sometimes it gets out of balance. I don't see that balance in scripture that the

most loving thing you can do is save somebody from going to hell, therefore kill babies. And the reason would be, I actually think that's kind of a, that is a Thanos way of thinking to always bring it back to superheroes like I a, that is a Thanos way of thinking to always bring it back to superheroes like I do, which is a utilitarian ethic, not a Christian ethic. And I think what's wrong with that, I mean, Jesus let the rich young ruler walk away. I think built into scripture as a whole is the sense that God has made us for relationship, but has given us the dignity of choice because it's only when we choose to be with God

that it's a meaningful relationship with him. So I don't see in the scripture, wipe out all the babies. In fact, that's what was trying to happen when Jesus was born, the opposite of what it means, killing somebody to accomplish a particular end. So that's, I think think an example of using people not

loving people the irony is thanos is the one who kind of lived out the ethic that i think you're talking about in the contrast and this might be getting as far aside i think the heroes in the avengers is captain america who's like we don't exchange lives actually the hero of the Marvel Universe is Iron Man who lays his life down sacrificially as a Christ help other people, which I think is much more in line with a Christian ethic than wiping out babies to save them from hell. I just don't see that within Scripture. Well, I think the more ethical thing to do would be not to create hell in the first place, right? I mean, we're dealing with a situation that Christians say that God set up.

And I don't know. I feel like I understand what you're saying, but why don't we have this conversation, you know, a thousand years from now and you in heaven, and maybe we'll still have internet with me in hell, and we can do this show again. And I can tell you, look, Sean, everybody here that's been burning for a thousand years here, we don't care about that relationship stuff or anything. Just get us the hell out of here. I wish you would have done anything to me. I wish I had never been born.

I'm sure that's how people would feel even after one hour of burning alive. So I think if you really look at and apprehend the magnitude of what hell as it's traditionally understood by Christians to mean, that eclipses everything. Just think about if, you know, your kids right now, if you knew that your kids had a fate where they were going to you know um burn alive uh uh if they do do something um at some point they're gonna just burn to death uh you know yeah you want to have a relationship with them and everything but wouldn't your overriding your overriding thing to be let's prevent that from happening and that just kind of wipes out everything. I got, if I do nothing in this life, I have to prevent my kids from burning to death. I know that's going

to happen to them. And so, so I guess I understand what you're saying, but if, if the, you know, Jonathan Edwards version of hell is true, I don't see how anything everything everything pales in comparison to that So you understand hell's being a physical place where people like burning in flesh that's being recreated and just being tortured Well out history maybe maybe or some sort of suffering that's equivalent. Yeah Okay, so not necessarily burning but it's clearly yeah, mean, it's always been described to me as burning. That's how our church described it. So that's how I... And I think that's how the common person understands hell. But yeah, I get that there's more sophisticated ways of understanding it,

but it is a torment like that and something I think you would definitely not want anyone to be in. So I'm tempted to go down the road of hell, but let's maybe nix it right there. Maybe that's a topic you and I could revisit and come back to. This is not the conversation we're planning on having, but I know that you... Things always go off the rails. They do go off the rails, but let me let me bring it back to uh oh man i have so many thoughts let me bring it back to this let's go kind of 30 000 view out for a second you had 10 years of conversations 133 conversations specifically

are there any arguments about god that give you pause? Are there any that you think like the origin of consciousness or fine tuning or beauty? I know you and I have talked about that before. Are there any that give you pause or is it just like a hundred percent this objection that you have, close the door, can't be a God. So nothing has given me pause, but I also don't feel like... On my podcast, I've conceded a lot of things. Like I've even conceded the resurrection. I've conceded, you know, I can conceded a lot of things. I've even conceded the resurrection. I can concede all these major arguments and still maintain my position. So when I say it doesn't give me pause, it doesn't mean that I remain stalwart, that all the atheist arguments are right and all the Christian arguments are deficient.

That's not what I mean. I'm saying that even if the Christians were right about many things, it comes down to, if I'm going to believe a being is God, I have to believe that he's good. I have to believe that he's fair. Otherwise, he's just a really powerful being. Maybe he's the devil. Maybe he's just a powerful being. Fine. And if that being exists, that being exists, but I'm not going to call that being God, right? Because God is supposed to be good. Now, if you want to say God's just some powerful being, and you got to call that being God, well, that's a different story. But I don't think that's the conversation that Christians are trying to have with me. They're saying God is good. God is fair. a different story but that's not i don't think that's the conversation uh that that that you know christians are trying to have with me they're saying god is good god is is fair god is is is

all those things uh omni omnimax so um so based on that um you know just uh the idea of people are punished for unbelief you know that right there I think would disqualify a God from being good a good God would understand why people don't don't believe and not punish people for that. So, yeah, that's sort of one of the backstops. And so even if the teleological argument is right, it doesn't mean it was God that created it to me. Okay, that's fair. How do you concede the resurrection, but then still, is it like connect those dots for me. I've heard Pincus

Lapidae, who is Jewish, concede the resurrection and not believe in a very interesting route. What does that look like for you as an atheist? Is it just I could intellectually concede so, or I think it's actually the best explanation of facts, but I still don't believe in the Christian God? No, I don't believe it occurred. I don't find that the facts are sufficient, but what I'm saying is even if it did occur, that shows that God was powerful, or maybe I shouldn't use the word God. The being that resurrected Jesus or Jesus himself was powerful did something that I have no way to explain, but that doesn't make him good. Interesting. Okay. So I, yeah, I probably would push back on that given the character of Jesus

and this being a vindication of the good life that Jesus lived. I think there's a way to connection. We don't necessarily have to go down that road. So it sounds to me like you not only think christianity is false you don't want it to be true as well is that fair or am i reading into things like if it were true it would be like like is there a part of you it's like i wish there were a god that loved me i wish there were eternal life or would you be like oh my goodness this is true i don't like this god i don't want it to be true does that make sense sure sure and you said a lot of things there um i i don't no i don't feel like i want christianity to be true at least christianity as i understand it i don't like that whole system i don't feel the system is ethical or moral so i wouldn't want that to be true um if you're talking about the benefits of being a Christian, do I want that?

Do I want the, you know, that God's there and I have a relationship with him and then I can live forever? I would say I don't know about that. I don't know if there's a God. Does he want us to have a relationship with him? Is that a good thing for us? Or maybe this is not the time for it. It's kind of like, I don't know that this is, it's good to have a relationship with God,

I guess is what I'm saying. Maybe God wants us to be on our own for a while. That's part of the developmental phase. But the part about living forever, that's interesting. I think I'd like to live longer. I want to see what comes next. I want to see what chat GPT-25 looks like, you know, and all these different things. So yes, I think I would like, that's attractive to me to be able to go on because I'm just curious about what's

going to happen next. And there's so many things I want to do. So if there's one thing attractive about Christianity to me, it would be that idea. Um, and also the, the justice, um, you know, for all the people that have suffered and never got justice, uh, if there's a way to have justice in the afterlife, that would be great, right? If there was an afterlife, an afterlife but those are not specifically christian things right um if you could just you could ostensibly have a reckoning later on and you could ostensibly have another existence after this life even if christianity uh you know was not true so did that answer your question at all? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's great. You did this podcast for a decade, and it was done almost

a decade ago, even though you uploaded a few episodes five years ago. The main conversations ended a decade ago. So at that point, I know you were reading a lot of apologetics books and thinking about this a lot. Do you still think about God a lot? Does it go through your mind? Or is it something you've just moved beyond and only when something pops up on YouTube, or I shoot an email that it goes through your mind? Well, I think about the issue of Christianity and, you know, right and wrong morality. I think about that a lot. I guess I don't think about God, but I think about concepts of God and what people say God is.

The reason I don't think about God is because I have no idea what that means. But I do have a good sense of how Christians, how Christians have decided, described God. And so about that being, I think about that being a lot and think about what, you know, like I said, look at it mostly from an ethical and moral lens on what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. So I guess I think about, it's more of an academic thing. It's more of a thing that I'm interested in. I think a lot about Christian arguments, and in as much as those are about God, then I guess I do think about that. But I don't feel like I'm thinking about an actual being that I'm wondering about. That's not how I feel. What about death? You and I are roughly the same age,

middle ages. Do you think about that much? How do you think about that and process that as an atheist? Yeah, so I think about death a lot. um uh you know my my dad passed a couple years ago my my mom's in uh uh thank you uh in hospice at this time so we had to take care of her for a while and so you know i i see them them at the saw them at the end of their lives and uh and so yeah but i think mostly about how i'm gonna go uh you know i want to make sure that i i I guess I'm concerned with the process of my death. I don't want to, you know, be a burden on my kids. I want to make sure that I've thought about how to do it. I'd like to control it if I can.

In Oregon, we live in a death of dignity state. So that way you don't have way you do have some say. I think we should have a say in our deaths. I mean, there's one thing we should own is how we leave this world. So I guess I think more about if things fall apart, what will I do and what will be the process of of me passing on i don't think much about what's after that because i don't really think there is anything after that i mean me being dead is going to be like me being how i was before i was born right i'll know absolutely nothing about it now do i am i convinced that that's 100% the case? No, there might be something else.

And I hope there is. And I'll be happy to go on to that next life and that'd be really cool. And I hope there's another life because it'd be more interesting than just being dead and gone. But I plan as if I'm going to be dead and gone. I think even if there is another life,

this life is definitely over. So whatever I have to do in this life, I have to do it now. I don't think we're going to get a second chance. If there's another life, this life is definitely over. So whatever I have to do in this life, I have to do it now. I don't think we're going to get a second chance. If there's another life, I'll be doing other things in that life, and I can't come back and redo things in this life. So it's very important to live this life as best as I can. I was reading a humanist writer recently,

and this humanist was talking about some of the atrocities in the 20th century, primarily by Marxist governments, whether China, Russia, Cambodia, etc. And one of the things that the writer said was, you know, it raises kind of a troubling question that this wasn't done just by a few deranged individual, but masses and masses of people were guards contributed to this or did nothing to stop it. I mean, probably millions of people allowed this to happen and then kind of left hanging. They said, you know, they, we share humanity with them, which means we're not as different from them as we would like to think we are. And that question left sitting and I was like, that's a really interesting question. Now I'm

convinced, which won't surprise you that the Bible got human nature, right? I do believe in, in human depravity and our capacity for evil. I think we see it all the time. None of that stuff surprises me. What's your view of human nature? Are we essentially good? Are we neutral? Are we corrupted? If so, like what, what do you think human nature is as an atheist? I think it's all of those things, right? Um, I think, uh, if you look at, uh, uh, these, these societies that you're talking about, um, uh, where there've been, been just massive,

um, human suffering and, and, uh, uh, uh, dictatorships that have, that have oppressed so many people and killed so many people.

I mean, that's, and, and, and like you say, with the guards and the people who are in on it, that's what happens to people when they're under extreme pressure. Right.

I think that there's, there's fear when there's fear that's, that's put on you from the top and it's survival. You know, you got to do what you got to do to survive. And that's just an insane situation. That's, people should never be put in that situation. And I hate that people are, but yes, if humans are pushed to one extreme or the other, they're going to react. And so these situations in history where people have been doing these terrible things to each other, that's a reaction to an unusual and extreme pressure from inside. But that happens with religion and without religion, right? If you look at some of the extreme things that people have done in the name of the church, it was because they felt some pressure from somewhere to have to do this.

If you look at the Inquisition, I would think there was some pressure. There's probably a lot of political stuff going on there too, but there may have been some people that actually felt we need to save these people because that was their equivalent of killing the young children. You know, we got to torture you until you confess so you don't go to hell, you know, the irony of that. But those are extreme situations those people were put into. And I'm sure a lot of those people that were denouncing uh people that that got caught up in the inquisition they were also afraid they're also afraid if they didn't denounce loud enough or if they didn't agree to be the torture or whatever they get thrown on the rack right so i think what you're describing is extreme and unfortunate situations and if you put people

in that kind of thing yeah people are going to try to survive. And that's what happens. That's the way God made us, so to speak. Aha. Good rejoinder. Okay. So in some ways, when I think about human nature, I have no interest in trying to defend what's been done by religion or by atheists. That's not the point here. And I think you're right.

There's something about human nature that a Darwinian worldview could explain this struggle for survival. I guess I see certain things that go far beyond survival, taking advantage of revenge, torture, that's not even remotely necessary for survival. But then you see these profound acts of sacrifice and goodness and courage, which to me, if we're made in God's image and we know right and wrong, and our Savior gave this example of sacrifice and calls us to do

similarly, you should expect to see at times these powerful acts of sacrifice. But if we're corrupted by sin, it's going to go beyond just survival. And we'll see these levels of just revenge and torture and terrorism. Like it makes sense to me, it fits. Are those outlier examples to you? Does it fit within your worldview or does that challenge your worldview at all? Are you asking how do I explain the uncommon acts of charity? I'm saying, so survival could explain to a degree acts of, say, you far beyond any purpose of survival not necessary at all to survive which to me points to the reality of evil and makes sense of what the scriptures say about the human heart like that fits that's what i would expect mere survival doesn't seem to be

able to explain certain level of deviousness and wickedness that I would argue comes from the human heart. Would you say survival can explain it? How would you process that from within your worldview? Well first of all, you know, to push back a bit, if God created everything, this is all within his creation, and if he did not directly create it, he knew this was going to happen. So I think under the Christian worldview, the ultimate responsibility for all of these things would have to fall in God for the ball that he put in motion with creation. But under my view, why do these things happen?

I think it's mostly through pressures. A lot of these things, people are just put in impossible situations, and they have to do this to survive. Now, are there psychopaths? Sure. I guess you'd have to ask a psychologist or somebody to understand that.

Are people missing parts of their brain that they have no empathy? I think that's true. And if you get somebody like that in charge, you know, yeah, you could have devastating effects. But I think those are outliers. I think in general, people, when they're in extreme situations and they have to survive,

yes, they will do what they have to do to survive, which could be to do terrible things to other people. Otherwise, it's going to be done to them or their kids. What choice do they have? But when you take off the pressure, I think most people, they're good and bad, and it's a good balance. And it's messy, but it can work. All right. You raised the problem of evil, raised the problem of hell, which interesting to me, the problem of evil is God has not done enough to stop injustice. The problem of hell is God has done too much to stop injustice.

Interesting to me, they're both moral objections about God. Maybe we'll come back and we'll probe one or both of those at another time. This was not where I planned this conversation to go. I was totally not going to go there, but I know that you're comfortable in these conversations. You're going to give a very thoughtful response. And of course you did. I enjoyed this a ton. I feel like we could talk for hours. Every time you say something, I've got a question. You have a question back for me, but folks can go back if they can find it anywhere. Listen to your podcast, A Christian and an Atheist, where you just very reasonably and respectfully and soberly, with an introduction by Striper, by the way,

give them a shout out. That was one of my favorite things. Go Striper, yeah. Got to give them some love. You modeled that well, and I've always, always appreciated that about you. Respectful, good conversation, very thoughtful, you believe. Emery, we'll do it again. And when I'm coming up your way in January, let's hang out in Portland.

Yeah, looking forward to it. Thank you, Sean. Thanks, my friend.